History

The Vancouver Security Special Interest Group (VanSecSIG, SecSIG or just SIG) was founded in 1983 originally as the CIPS Vancouver Security Special Interest Group. The name was chosen because the group had a number of members from the Vancouver Chapter of the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) when it was founded. However, CIPS has never formally recognized any association between the SecSIG and itself, and the SecSIG has always operated independently from CIPS.

Nevertheless, many in the information security community still referred to the group as the CIPS SIG. It was only in 2013 that that CIPS was officially dropped from the organization’s name. The name "Vancouver Security Special Interest Group" was formally adopted, recognizing its status as a standalone organization as well as reflecting the historical roots of the group.

In 2012, another group known at the ISMS Users Group of BC merged with the SecSIG. It was involved with setting up meetings around the ISO 27000 family of standards once or twice a year. It now is part of the SecSIG as the Information Management Subcommittee, and is involved in setting up part of the day-long meeting held by the SecSIG every January.

Around the same time, the organization behind the CISSP certification, (ISC)², decided to start a chapter program. Some of the SecSIG executive were concerned that adding another chapter organization into the Vancouver information security community would only fragment it further. There were already six other organizations at that time in Vancouver trying to find speakers and attract an audience in the local information security industry. So the executive of the SecSIG decided to apply to (ISC)² to establish the (ISC)² Vancouver Chapter.

The (ISC)² Vancouver Chapter was founded in May 2013, and the SecSIG and the (ISC)² Vancouver Chapter now work together and hold joint meetings. They also have a shared executive.